I had never heard that cancer can be estrogen and progestin positive. I wonder if this is a test that is done routinely or does it have to be requested?

Women who have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer are at high risk. Ovarian cancer is included in this equation because both ovarian and breast cancer have hormonal components. Though my great-grandmothers’ and my grandmother’s cancers were not hormonally driven, my mother’s breast cancer was classified as invasive and estrogen and progesterone positive.

strogen and progesterone are common hormones used in hormone replacement therapy and are also found in most birth-control pills. Many young women today are on the birth control pill, ingesting these hormones daily. According to American Cancer Society, research done by Scandinavian scientists in the 1990s has proven that women who continually use birth-control pills for more than seven years have a higher risk of having invasive breast cancer.

Breast cancers-- and many other cancers (particularly those of the female genital tract) can be estrogen and progesterone positive. In fact, this is very common. These are tests that are routinely done upon diagnosis of the cancer because the treatment options are different if the tumor is positive for these hormone receptors.